Below by Johanna Miklós

Online. Thumbnail size pictures titled “Below & Beyond” fill my screen. Below is thick, sticky as molasses even in this tiny rendering. Beyond floats in glorious brightness.

I want to go to the gallery where the originals are on display for friends and those who drop in on second Friday nights, but I’m too far away. He instant messaged: I play disco music at showings. I imagine a pulse in these tiny objects. Unpaid extras will shed heavy coats in a pile – it’s cold in Chicago – to cheerfully dig for them later. Lip gloss and flipped hair; they will bear wine and gyrate in clusters through art and conversation. Being there as meaning.

He observes. He thirsts for a character in the crowd to express something – anything – besides polite interest. Just one to ask, ‘Why is Below dark?’ would be a gift for him who emailed: Save me from the zombies.

I wish him a visitor who sees light in what is past. There is légèreté in what cannot be changed. I hold mine dear, in warm pastels so I can pretend to live. Perhaps a student in the crowd will admit the burden of a future. Though young, he knows imagination is a deceptive friend.

As reckless now as then, I agree to a private showing. It’s an hour before the doors will open. I click and rotate while he installs a video cam on his computer. Below is now a light sliver, and his Beyond heavy and unknowable.

“What the fuck?” I haven’t heard his voice in decades.

“It’s another way of seeing it.”

“There’s no other way. It’s my art.” A black square pops-up and conceals the paintings.

“Your unknown future is brighter than your past?” I travel at net speed to Chicago. Pixels of his flesh and eyes form and dissolve again.

“Bullshit!” he insists. “You missed the point.”

“Hardly, or you wouldn’t get so cross.”

“That’s not you.” The gaping holes of his appall rip through the chaos on my screen. “You’re young. You’re beautiful.” The video feed breaks off.

“Thirty years ago . . .”

Offline.

© 2012 Johanna Miklos

Johanna Miklos is from Munich, Germany. She has an MFA from CUA and a rescue dog from Mississippi.

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